So, I log into the mid war arena. 32 people on, should be enough to find a fight.
Not a single enemy aircraft airborn. Not a single enemy radar bar anywhere.
Why not? Back when AH was CK and WB, 32 people was a party in the arena. So what's the diff? The arenas pretty much suck as they are now. Here's what's wrong:
The fields are too far apart. It takes 20 min to fly from one field to another, and if you set angle trim to climb from one field to another, you can be at 20k before you get to the other field. Way back when WB was really fun with fewer people, you could barely get to 12k in a straight climb field to field. People could log in and find a fight instantly. No motoring around wondering where everyone was. If you're going to fragment the arenas, move the fields closer.
Terrain is too boring. Back in the day, especially before CK became WB and right after AH spawned from WB, there was ALWAYS interesting terrain. Fields were up on mountains, there were canyons to fight in, rivers to fly up that lead through canyons to fields either hidden in the canyon or fields up on flat-topped mountains, volcanoes placed right between two fields that were just a bit closer to each other than other fields, etc. In other words, the terrain was designed to gather people to interesting places to fight. The terrains now... BORING. Flat flat flat, big oceans, occasional hills, all fields within a couple thousand feet of sea level. No 7k fields, no deep valleys, no volcanoes in central fight areas. Boring as hell. Might as well hop in a tank and drive or hop in a buff and go make dinner during climbout. Boooooring.
Heavy flak. HT explained during the conference what affects ack accuracy... Basically there is no real ack model, just a random bubble around your plane that expands or contracts based on your speed and G level. So if you're a hell of a long way from a fleet or field with heavy ack, even though the ballistic time of flight may be 20 seconds so a maneuver every 19 seconds should TOTALLY defeat any aimed flak, if you're not flying very very fast or maneuvering hard all the time, chances are the flak is going to kill you no matter what you do. Heck, even if you're maneuvering hard, it's still a kill bubble around your plane, not the ack shooting at where the gunners thought you would be one time of flight later after pulling the trigger. It's FAKE and everyone knows it, feels it instinctively because it's WRONG, so they adjust game play to avoid flak by flying low or avoiding areas between fields. Guess what, since fields are so far apart, that means that everyone flies to areas where the enemy is not going to be. That degrades gameplay especially when there are fewer players in the arena.
This kind of post got me banned 4 years ago, but with the recent arena changes it's time for me to post what every player who cares about AIR COMBAT feels is wrong about the game. It takes too long to find a fight, the terrain is boring and doesn't enhance fights, and the damn heavy flak interferes with air combat.
It's an easy fix... Move the fields closer (makes sense now that the arenas have fewer players), use deep canyons, put fields up on hills, and put in some volcanoes to fight in/around, and either tone down the flak or put in a real aimed flak model that reflects aircraft maneuvers during the actual time of flight of the flak rounds. That will go a hell of a long way to keep players fighting each other instead of complaining about how the arenas suck.
